Cross with rose and banner drawing

The canvas came back from the menders at Ely with its lettering scraped to nothing, so Mr Sallow has me starting again. He wants the scroll left blank this time, no name, no prices, nothing the council can read and hold us to. I told him a blank banner is a sorry thing to hang over a ghost train, and he told me to paint whatever I liked above it, so long as the punters kept their eyes off the sides.

So I did. The cross has pointed arms like the tines of a fork, and I put a rose bloom in the upper corner because your mother always said a fair needs one soft thing to balance the iron. The vine I ran from the foot of the cross down towards the ground, thorns all along it. I had a wager with Tomasz that nothing left on the grass stays clean for long, and he has been sulking since he lost.

Last night a girl from the dodgems stood in the drizzle and read that blank scroll for a full minute. Then she asked me what it was going to say. I told her I didn't know yet. She said it was the only honest sign she had seen all season, and she walked off into the dark with her hands in her coat pockets.

I've left the banner white. If you come up on Saturday, bring the good brushes and some black ink, and we'll decide together what it ought to say.

Yours, Mae